Without consciousness the mind–body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.
Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
Abstract
Frank Jackson’s famous Knowledge Argument moves from the premise that complete physical knowledge is not complete knowledge about experiences to the falsity of physicalism. In recent years, a consensus has emerged that the credibility of this and other well-known anti-physicalist arguments can be undermined by allowing that we possess a special category of concepts of experiences, phenomenal concepts, which are conceptually independent from physical/functional concepts. It is held by a large number of philosophers that since the conceptual independence of phenomenal concepts does not imply the metaphysical independence of phenomenal properties, physicalism is safe. This paper distinguishes between two versions of this novel physicalist strategy—Phenomenal Concept Strategy (PCS)—depending on how it cashes out “conceptual independence,” and argues that neither helps the physicalist cause. A dilemma for PCS arises: cashing out “conceptual independence” in a way compatible with physicalism requires abandoning some manifest phenomenological intuitions, and cashing it out in a way compatible with those intuitions requires dropping physicalism. The upshot is that contra Brian Loar and others, one cannot “have it both ways.”
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Notes
Obviously, not all states which a subject is in are conscious (e.g., certain biological states such as digestion). Less obviously, some philosophers argue that there is nothing it is like for a subject to be in some mental states (e.g., being in intentional states such as believing and desiring). Let us grant this point and stick with uncontroversial examples of phenomenally conscious states. Moreover, some philosophers claim that putting all experiential states into a single baggage of consciousness is unfair to them: they argue that perceptually conscious states are intentional while bodily states are non-intentional. Surely, however, accepting such a distinction is no hinder to accept the phenomenal character (what-it’s-likeness) of all these states.
Woody Allen once famously said that “ninety percent of life is just being there”. Luckily then we have the remaining 10 %.
There are familiar problems about how to define “physical” and how to understand “an entirely physical world”. Stoljar (2001) makes a distinction between theory-based and object-based conceptions of the physical. According to the theory-based conception, a property is physical if it is either a property which physical theory tells us about or else is a property which metaphysically supervenes on properties physical theory tells us about. And, according to the object-based conception, a property is physical if it’s either a property required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects (e.g., rocks, trees, planets) or else a property which metaphysically supervenes on properties required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects. (Stoljar then goes on to argue that these two conceptions need not be co-extensional.) There are two further issues about the theory-based conception: First, how broadly should we take “physical theory” (just physics or physical sciences broadly conceived)? Second, which physical theory, the current one or the one in an idealized future (Crane and Mellor 1990)? For the purposes of this paper, we need not get bogged down with these questions and can instead be very inclusive: a property is physical if it is either a theory-based (where theory includes all idealized physical sciences conceived as a recognizable descendant of current physical sciences (Jackson (1998)) or an object-based physical property. The problem of locating the place of conscious experience arises even under this very broad conception of the physical.
Other well-known anti-physicalist arguments include the Conceivability Argument (Chalmers 1996) and the Explanatory Gap Argument (Levine 1983). The Conceivability Argument moves from the conceivability of zombies (creatures physically identical to us but lacking consciousness) to the falsity of physicalism. The Explanatory Gap Argument moves from the premise that no physical account can constitutively explain why a certain subject has this phenomenal property (rather than that property) to the falsity of physicalism. The physicalist position addressed here holds that these arguments can replied in a way structurally similar to the reply it proposes against the Knowledge Argument. Hence, the lessons of my discussion of this position’s reply to the Knowledge Argument can be plausibly generalized to its replies to other arguments. .
Cognitive significance may in turn be understood in terms of either informativeness or cognitive roles, giving two different versions of Fregean test. First version: the concepts, X and Y, are identical when the identity statement “X is Y” is informative. The concept water is different from the concept H 2 O because “water is H2O” is informative. Second version: the concepts, X and Y, are identical when they play the same role in reason and recognition. The concept water is different from the concept H 2 O because different consequences can be inferred from the statements “that is water” and “that is H2O” and also because the circumstances under which these concepts enable the subject to recognize water are different. I will not adjudicate between these two versions (they appear to be equivalent), as our discussion may proceed without such a decision.
Chalmers (2007) also distinguishes between thin and thick accounts of PCS, though its definitions of those accounts are different from the ones given here. I agree with Chalmers that “no account of phenomenal concepts is both powerful enough to explain our epistemic situation with regard to consciousness and tame enough to be explained in physical terms” (p. 168). Chalmers goes through complicated arguments which bring in controversial zombie considerations to defend his thesis. I think the thesis itself can be argued for in a more direct manner, something which I attempt to accomplish here.
By “the model of type-demonstrative concepts,” I don’t mean an account of phenomenal concepts which models their semantics fully on the semantics of ordinary demonstratives such as ‘this’ and ‘that’. Such an account would be highly counterintuitive given that the reference of a demonstrative term changes from a context of utterance to another while the references of phenomenal concepts are context-independent. However, for a defense of the idea that phenomenal concepts are as context-dependent as indexical terms like ‘I’, see O’Dea (2002).
Joseph Levine’s following remarks are helpful here: “A token-demonstrative picks out an individual, a token of some type, though type information needn’t be part of the content of the expression… A type-demonstrative is a demonstrative expression that picks out a type or a kind, as in ‘that color’ said while holding up and visually attending to a paint chip. One isn’t referring to the actual paint on the surface of the chip, but to the color type of which that surface is a token.” (2010, pp. 176).
Levin does not give many examples of what she takes to be phenomenal concepts. She says: “We can think of these type-demonstrative concepts as stored in memory in the form of an “indexed” demonstrative, so that what it’s like to see red can be stored as “that-r” or what it’s like to see green as “that-g”.” (2007, p. 89). So, according to Levin, the concept what it is like to see red is a phenomenal concept which can be stored as “that-r”. I will sometimes use the concept red sensation instead of the concept what it is like to see red just for the sake of convenience. As I use the concept red sensation, it does not imply any kind of “reification” of phenomenal states, something like sense-data.
Levine distinguishes between “ascriptive” and “non-ascriptive” modes of presentation: “An ascriptive mode is one that involves the ascription of properties to the referent, and it’s (at least partly) by virtue of its instantiation of these properties that the object (or property) is the referent… [Non-ascriptive modes] establish relations… “behind the scenes”, not by being cognitively grasped by the subject. The subject’s competence with the term, her “knowledge” of the meaning, consists entirely in her instantiating the requisite [e.g., causal] relation to something in the world” (1998, pp. 457–458). Levine’s non-ascriptive modes of presentation are what the thin account thinks are associated with phenomenal concepts.
See, for instance, Perry (1979) where it is argued that knowing every non-indexical fact about the world won’t be enough for one to deduce what time it is now.
Admittedly, the picture is very rough but it will do for the present purposes. Here I ignore Wittgensteinian scruples about how to recognize images themselves. Moreover, one may be inclined to claim that there are no visual images in play in the recognition of external objects, that they are non-inferentially recognized. It is important to be clear on what is meant by “non-inferential” here. If it means “without a conscious process of making inferences from (visual images)”, then it is no doubt true that visual images do not generally intervene between perceptions and perceptual beliefs. But in order to grant an epistemically intermediary role for visual images, we need not assume that the inferences from them are consciously performed by the subject. If the subject needs something like visual images to justify his application of a certain concept to a particular object, then there is a good reason to assign visual images the epistemic role in question. Finally, I remain non-committal about whether visual images are picture-like (“analog”) or sentence-like (“digital”) objects.
For an illuminating defense of the idea that perceptual demonstratives are never pure in the sense of being unassociated with any descriptive components, see Gertler (2001).
Levin explicitly accepts this: “[If] phenomenal concepts really function like introspectively deployed demonstratives, then all that’s needed to distinguish them from introspectively deployed nonphenomenal demonstratives are differences in what they denote” (2007, p. 92).
For Gertler (2001), this is indeed what happens in blindsight cases. She argues that they have experiences but they do not know what they are like because of a certain cognitive defect.
I do not mean to imply that one cannot be phenomenally conscious without knowing that one is phenomenally conscious. My point is merely that, as a matter of fact, we are not only phenomenally conscious but we also know that we are phenomenally conscious.
Loar explicitly distinguishes between phenomenal concepts we conscious subjects have and “phenomenally blank” concepts of blindsight subjects: “The difference between a self-directed blindsight recognitional concept and a phenomenal concept appears to be that the latter involves a phenomenal mode of presentation while the former conceives its referent in some other, odd, way.” (2004, pp. 230–231). .
Hence, Levin’s holding pure demonstrative account conflicts with her assertion that phenomenal concepts “pick out their referents from a particular point of view” (2007, p. 90). One of the lessons of the discussion so far has in fact been that one cannot have both.
This does not of course mean that in order for me to have the recognitional concept car, I should be able to have the concepts incorporated in the description. I think even a small child who does not have the concepts image and cause can form a recognitional concept of cars. And, this is consistent with the idea that recognitional concepts are generally formed against a further conceptual background. Though a sufficiently thick conceptual background might be taken as a general requirement to have recognitional and demonstrative abilities, possessing the specific concepts that are used to articulate the descriptive contents of particular recognitional concepts is not required to have those recognitional concepts.
As Gertler says, “Suppose that there is a man drinking a martini in the corner of a room down the hall. If that man does not appear to me in any way, my utterance “that man in the corner drinking a martini” will not refer to him” (2001, p. 316).
What about the so-called inner-sense theory? Here is a conditional I hold: If the inner-sense theorists (Armstrong 1968; Lycan 1996) argue that we have experiences of experiences just in the same sort of way that we have experiences of things out there, then they are wrong. A good reason to think that there are no higher-order experiences is that we have no concepts of those experiences, and it is reasonable that if we had higher-order experiences, then we would have concepts of them just like we have concepts of first-order experiences. For powerful objections against the inner-sense theory, see Carruthers (2000).
I don’t claim that every proponent of the thick account holds the above account according to which there is no distance between experiences and their appearances. I use that account to present at least one way to motivate the thick account.
Loar talks as if both claims are equivalent: “We might say that a phenomenal concept has as its mode of presentation the very phenomenal quality that it picks out. We might also say that phenomenal concepts have “token modes of presentation” that are non-contingently tied to the phenomenal qualities to which those concept point: particular cramp feelings and images can focus one’s conception of the phenomenal quality of cramp feeling” (2004, pp. 231–232). A central question is how we should understand the idea of “non-contingent tie.”
There are important questions an adequate theory of phenomenal concepts should answer: how many kinds of phenomenal concepts are there? (For instance, Chalmers (2003) makes useful distinctions among what he calls pure, standing, and direct phenomenal concepts.) What is the relation between constitution and reference? Does constitution by itself determine reference (Balog) or do we need a teleological/causal account (Papineau)? Is “quotation” a good model for phenomenal concepts? Is an “experience operator” needed for the thick accounts to work? I will address these and similar questions in another work, as nothing in my present argument rests on them.
The passage from McLaughlin is quoted from his response to Horgan and Tienson’s (2001), where what I call the thick version of PCS corresponds to what they name “new wave materialism.”
Since McLaughlin clearly states that the mode of presentation associated with a phenomenal concept is the very quality it refers, it is reasonable to construe his claim of referential directness of phenomenal concepts as (iii).
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Demircioglu, E. Physicalism and phenomenal concepts. Philos Stud 165, 257–277 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9959-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9959-7